Blog: Choosing an Effective Color Scheme

Your business’ identity is greatly impacted by a number of aspects, but color scheme is the one aspect than can make or break how your business is initially viewed by a client or customer. Creating an effective color scheme is not as simple and objective as one might think. Most of how your color scheme affects your clients or customers happens at a subconscious level, so you must first understand some basic color theory, how colors affect people, and your market. Let’s get started.

Understanding Basic Color Theory

There are four classes of colors: Primary, Secondary, Tertiary, and Neutrals. Primary colors consist of red, blue, and yellow. The second class of colors are created by combining two Primary colors. Red and blue make purple, blue and yellow make green, and red and yellow combine to make orange. Tertiary colors are created by combining a primary and a secondary color. Red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-green are a few examples. You can continue combining these colors infinitely to create virtually any color you would like. The final class of colors are Neutrals. This class consists of white, black, and the varying shades of gray in between.

Understanding Color Psychology

All of these colors are rolled into one of two categories: warm colors and cool colors. Warm colors consist of any color made up of reds, yellows, and oranges. Generally speaking, warm colors are regarded as lively, energetic, passionate colors. They are also closely associated with Summer and Fall. Cool colors, on the other hand, are made of any color containing, purples, blues, and greens. These colors are seen as clean, subdued, calming colors, and are most often associated with Winter and Spring. Additionally, each color has many emotions associated with it.

Red: This is the color of passion, love, danger, excitement, and life. Red has the tendency to raise peoples’ blood pressure, breathing rate, and metabolism.

Orange: Orange is a very dynamic color. It can be easily associated with autumn, but it also can be incredibly energetic. When used correctly, it can draw the same attention as red can, while being less in-your-face.

Yellow: Yellow is, perhaps, one of the most lively and vibrant colors. It is closely associated with happiness and optimism. One must be careful when using yellow: it can easily become overpowering when it is used too much.

Green: Green is closely associated with money, wealth, jealousy, nature, and tranquility. Green is the most calming color.

Blue: This color is typically the most visually appealing color, especially to men. It is typically associated with cleanliness, honor, and trust. Light blues are calming or refreshing, while dark blues create a sense of solidarity and stability.

Purple: Purple is often associated with royalty, luxury, creativity, and romance. Purple shares many traits of its parent colors, red and blue. A variant of purple can come across as either energetic or different context the it might come across as calming.

Black: Black is commonly associated with elegance, power, death, and mystery. In art, black is considered to add a great sense of visual weight to a design.

White: White is used often used to convey purity or innocence, or cleanliness. It adds a sense of space to a design.

Gray: Gray is usually considered to be a cool color. It is commonly associated with nothingness, professionalism, and mourning. It is used in corporate designs to convey a sense of formality. Dark grays can be used in place of black, and light grays can be used in place of white.

With every color scheme, it is important to be sure you have a great designer on board to aide in the process. Here at Inno Garage, we can develop a high-quality color scheme for your business, as well as take care of any of other marketing and design needs you may have.

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